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Quite frankly I think blaming it on flying is incredibly offensive. It's got nothing, at all, to do with cars or flying. They're tiny pollutors compared to ind

Quite frankly I think blaming it on flying is incredibly offensive. It's got nothing, at all, to do with cars or flying. They're tiny pollutors compared to industry, specifically the dairy industry, transportation by truck and manufacturing things in China. Sure we could fly less and drive less but that would do fuck all, and certainly having fewer kids isn't going to solve any problems. Having fewer kids in the west actually just means white people having fewer kids in the west, we're well below replacement rate and are being rapidly replaced by people coming from high birthrate countries like India. The only thing that will actually solve the problem is sustained government intervention in trucking, dairy and industry, worldwide.

laumars 10y ago
While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support wasteful industries because they sell our products cheaper or manufacture more desirable products? How many of us with access to clean water still buy bottled? Or buy fruits out of season and other import produce? Most of us westerners have a pretty decent standard of living. Yet we blame industry for the environmental costs of our standard of living while simultaneously paying industry for their services. So I think we are just as much to blame. And by "we" I am completely blaming myself too.
- milesrout 10y ago
  No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops, except for things that already come from overseas anyway. I live in NZ, I don't have much choice. What little carbon budget the world does have should be used to ensure that people living in places like NZ can still have access to global commerce. I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that? But I shouldn't have to say that. That I do those things is irrelevant. I do them for many reasons, but you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world. It isn't. It's society's responsibility as a whole. It should be a global push. Otherwise we're just taxing conscience.
  - caoilte 10y ago
    Unfortunately, admitting that you are right would require accepting that the entire neo-liberal edifice of free market fundamentalism ("the free market can solve every problem") is wrong. We are societally unable to do that currently. It's our modern religion. Otherwise incredibly smart people (I include everyone on this website) are unable to see that only government intervention (pushed for by us) can solve this problem.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sp332 10y ago
    Flying is a relatively small contributor. But as spodek pointed out, a flight can take a year's worth of CO2 emissions for one person if we're aiming for a 2-degree change. That just shows how far over that limit we are going. We're going to have to do all the big things you alluded to, but if we don't also tackle smaller things like flying less, we're still going to be over the limit.
  - laumars 10y ago
    > I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that? Sadly that happens a lot in the UK :( > you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world Where did I say it was your responsibility _alone_ to "fix the ills of the world"? What I said was we are all, collectively, responsible. Myself included. I also said industry exists to serve our consumption. This is me accepting my responsibility not me passing the buck.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    In Ireland, at least, it's really hard to come by things in the store that aren't wrapped in plastic. It's obscene, and I haven't found a lot of alternatives. Very high end stores sometimes sell items without plastic, but at much greater cost. I mean, who the hell needs individually-plastic-wrapped cucumbers? I have started growing my own tomatoes, so hopefully that helps, but it's only one item out of many.
KnightOfWords 10y ago
Tackling the problem from the top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (personal responsibility) is the most effective path forward. The first step is education, actually understanding what contributes to our carbon footprint and more importantly radiative forcing. This gets complicated fast (here's an article on aviation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/car...), but reasonable ballpark estimates can be made. Transportation accounts for about 14% of emissions, compared to 24% for agriculture and 21% for industry. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
- milesrout 10y ago
  The reality is that nobody acknowledges the impact of agriculture. Remember that a very large amount of those transportation costs are associated with agriculture as well, so really it's more like 30% of agriculture. 30% of emissions, basically all for dairy. That's disgusting.
jsperson 10y ago
Offensive!? You're of course free to get offended, but pointing out that flying pollutes a lot relative to the proposed limits is certainly valid. I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.
- hobs 10y ago
  Because collective action is the only way to make a dent in multinational corporations that poison the environment? While changing the agreement and raising awareness is good, its basically rearranging the deck chairs on the titantic. Do you know how many "upright citizens" I know who dont shop at wallmart? All my friends, family, and people I work with. And how's wallmart doing economically right now? Even a decently large group of citizens taking action has minimal impact on the global scale. Either convince the governments of the world or expect the slide to continue at an ever increasing pace.
  - lhopki01 10y ago
    Do you accept that even if governments do take action every person will still need to live within a carbon allowance or else global warming will still happen? If so even if you convince governments you'll still have to fly less and live in smaller houses and eat more locally sourced food.
- milesrout 10y ago
  Taking 'personal responsibility' does nothing. I'm not going to forgo travelling overseas from NZ once every few years because some American thinks I'm 'using up my carbon budget'. It's not my personal fucking responsibility. Its yours. Your country is the one ruining the environment, backing out of carbon treaties, polluting the world. It's you, not me. NZ has a dairy industry, yes, but I don't vote for parties that support it. Nobody is saying you should 'wait for government'. Don't 'wait' for anything. Do. Change the government, push government in the direction you want it to go in. You know what would go much further than 'buying less stuff made in China'? Not wasting so much fuel shipping the absurd quantity of stuff you Americans consume on a day-to-day basis around your enormous country.

laumars 10y ago

While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support wasteful industries because they sell our products cheaper or manufacture more desirable products? How many of us with access to clean water still buy bottled? Or buy fruits out of season and other import produce? Most of us westerners have a pretty decent standard of living. Yet we blame industry for the environmental costs of our standard of living while simultaneously paying industry for their services. So I think we are just as much to blame. And by "we" I am completely blaming myself too.

milesrout 10y ago
No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally. You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'. Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops, except for things that already come from overseas anyway. I live in NZ, I don't have much choice. What little carbon budget the world does have should be used to ensure that people living in places like NZ can still have access to global commerce. I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that? But I shouldn't have to say that. That I do those things is irrelevant. I do them for many reasons, but you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world. It isn't. It's society's responsibility as a whole. It should be a global push. Otherwise we're just taxing conscience.
- caoilte 10y ago
  Unfortunately, admitting that you are right would require accepting that the entire neo-liberal edifice of free market fundamentalism ("the free market can solve every problem") is wrong. We are societally unable to do that currently. It's our modern religion. Otherwise incredibly smart people (I include everyone on this website) are unable to see that only government intervention (pushed for by us) can solve this problem.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 10y ago
  Flying is a relatively small contributor. But as spodek pointed out, a flight can take a year's worth of CO2 emissions for one person if we're aiming for a 2-degree change. That just shows how far over that limit we are going. We're going to have to do all the big things you alluded to, but if we don't also tackle smaller things like flying less, we're still going to be over the limit.
- laumars 10y ago
  > I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that? Sadly that happens a lot in the UK :( > you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world Where did I say it was your responsibility _alone_ to "fix the ills of the world"? What I said was we are all, collectively, responsible. Myself included. I also said industry exists to serve our consumption. This is me accepting my responsibility not me passing the buck.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  In Ireland, at least, it's really hard to come by things in the store that aren't wrapped in plastic. It's obscene, and I haven't found a lot of alternatives. Very high end stores sometimes sell items without plastic, but at much greater cost. I mean, who the hell needs individually-plastic-wrapped cucumbers? I have started growing my own tomatoes, so hopefully that helps, but it's only one item out of many.

KnightOfWords 10y ago

Tackling the problem from the top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (personal responsibility) is the most effective path forward. The first step is education, actually understanding what contributes to our carbon footprint and more importantly radiative forcing. This gets complicated fast (here's an article on aviation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/car...), but reasonable ballpark estimates can be made. Transportation accounts for about 14% of emissions, compared to 24% for agriculture and 21% for industry. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

milesrout 10y ago
The reality is that nobody acknowledges the impact of agriculture. Remember that a very large amount of those transportation costs are associated with agriculture as well, so really it's more like 30% of agriculture. 30% of emissions, basically all for dairy. That's disgusting.

jsperson 10y ago

Offensive!? You're of course free to get offended, but pointing out that flying pollutes a lot relative to the proposed limits is certainly valid. I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.

hobs 10y ago
Because collective action is the only way to make a dent in multinational corporations that poison the environment? While changing the agreement and raising awareness is good, its basically rearranging the deck chairs on the titantic. Do you know how many "upright citizens" I know who dont shop at wallmart? All my friends, family, and people I work with. And how's wallmart doing economically right now? Even a decently large group of citizens taking action has minimal impact on the global scale. Either convince the governments of the world or expect the slide to continue at an ever increasing pace.
- lhopki01 10y ago
  Do you accept that even if governments do take action every person will still need to live within a carbon allowance or else global warming will still happen? If so even if you convince governments you'll still have to fly less and live in smaller houses and eat more locally sourced food.
milesrout 10y ago
Taking 'personal responsibility' does nothing. I'm not going to forgo travelling overseas from NZ once every few years because some American thinks I'm 'using up my carbon budget'. It's not my personal fucking responsibility. Its yours. Your country is the one ruining the environment, backing out of carbon treaties, polluting the world. It's you, not me. NZ has a dairy industry, yes, but I don't vote for parties that support it. Nobody is saying you should 'wait for government'. Don't 'wait' for anything. Do. Change the government, push government in the direction you want it to go in. You know what would go much further than 'buying less stuff made in China'? Not wasting so much fuel shipping the absurd quantity of stuff you Americans consume on a day-to-day basis around your enormous country.